PEOPLE’s Summer Picks

Following in the footsteps of others who have offered readings lists for summer ’12, the new issue of People magazine selects a dozen titles, most of them by established authors. They also add their voice to two titles that have emerged as a potential breakouts, Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple and the debut Gilded Age by Claire McMillan.

Where’d You Go, Bernadette has appeared on several other lists, despite certain difficulties in selling it (click on image below for a trailer on Entertainment Weekly’s “Shelf Life,” of author Semple trying to get various people, including Elliott Bay’s Rick Simonson, to buy it).

Semple misses the book’s main selling point; herself. She was a writer for the cult favorite TV show, Arrested Development. People describes the book this way, “When her agoraphobic mom disappears, 15-year-old Bee takes matters into her own hands. An uproarious comdy of manners from a former writer for Arrested Development.”

The full list after the jump:

Gilded Age, Claire McMillan, S&S, 6/12

Yes, Chef, Marcus Samuelsson, Random House, 6/26

Where’d You Go, Bernadette, Maria Semple, Hachette/Little, Brown, 8/14

A Conspiracy of Friends (A Corduroy Mansions Novel), Alexander McCall Smith, RH/Pantheon, 6/12

Gold, Chris Cleave, S&S, 7/3

Gone, Cathi Hanauer, S&S/Atria, 6/19

The Red House, Mark Haddon, RH/Doubleday, Random House Audio, 6/12

Creole Belle, James Lee Burke, S&S, 7/17

Broken Harbor, Tana French, Penguin/Viking, 7/24

When In Doubt, Add Butter, Beth Harbison, Macmillan/St. Martin’s Press, 7/17

The Receptionist: An Education at The New Yorker, Janet Groth, Workman/Algonquin, 6/26

Picture This, Jacqueline Sheehan, HarperCollins/Morrow, 5/22

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